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Simplifying the EC2 Reserved Instance Model

• snewman 12y ago
  Summary: Amazon just announced a new pricing model for reserved instances. At a quick glance, it appears to be better in some scenarios, worse in others. For instance, the "No Upfront" option gives a 30% to 50% discount from on demand pricing, with no upfront payment -- though you have to commit to using the instance for a full year. On the other hand, a 3-year Light Utilization reservation used to be a great way to get a substantial discount without much upfront obligation, and that doesn't seem to be possible any more. (Though you can still buy Light and Medium Utilization reservations until Feb. 2.)
• iurisilvio 12y ago
  "Simplifying". Now you have 3 ways to pay for the same thing, so now it is simple. You have an extra ~3% discount for the all upfront method, comparing with the partial upfront. The financials here does not look good (for the user).
  • andrewmunsell 12y ago
    There's quite a few types of servers that have larger discounts (~10%), such as the 1 year terms for m3, c3, g2 (which is ~12%), etc. Also, the previous model[1] had three different types of reserved instances-- light, medium, and heavy usage. These gave discounts based on the actual number of hours utilized, which is harder to keep track of than the new three choices. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-instances/previous-reserved-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-insta...
• freshflowers 12y ago
  Gee, thanks Amazon for making my spreadsheets even more complicated... I love AWS, but figuring out the cost/benefits of any addition to their offerings is becoming increasingly hard.
• reallyimran 12y ago
  You could also think of it like a 25% to 30% discount on your ondemand infrastructure without anything other than a YES I will keep the infrastructure.